Mojo was conceived as a super simple effect for creating a sexy look quick, with a minimum of fuss. I designed it to be based entirely on sliders and other controls easily ported from one application to another, so that we could make it a screaming good deal and get it working on as many hosts as possible.

That turned out to be a lucky move, because so far it’s almost the only Magic Bullet plug-in that Final Cut Pro X can support. Both the graphical controls that Colorista II uses and the dense “custom data” blocks that Magic Bullet Looks relies on are victims of bugs or shortcomings in the initial release of FCP X.

The good news is that Red Giant is working directly with Apple on addressing these issues. But rather than simply tell you that and expect you to believe it, we knuckled down and got Mojo working as quickly as we could so that you’d know we’re taking FCP X seriously.

And by “we,” I mean the hard-working Engineering and QA folks at Red Giant, not me. I just got to sit back and watch.

Mojo is a dream in FCP X. It plays back at 1080p in near real time on my iMac without rendering, but the background rendering is so seamless you’ll never even know its happening. Love it or hate it, FCP X really nailed the whole background processing thing, and it’s fun for me to see one of our tools working so seamlessly with the new architecture.

For one week only, Mojo is on sale for $49, which is roughly half price (use coupon code MOJOFCPX). And that’s one license that works in every host Mojo supports — so if you’re in NLE limbo right now, Mojo can be a companion to you as you wander. Mojo for FCP X is a free update for existing customers, as will be all of the Magic Bullet Suite updates for FCP X as they become available — or possible.